Nobuyoshi Muto

Nobuyoshi Muto (15 July 1868-27 July 1933) was commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army from 28 July 1926 to 26 August 1927, succeeding Yoshinori Shirakawa and preceding Chotaro Muraoka and from 8 August 1932 to 27 July 1933, succeeding Shigeru Honjo and preceding Takashi Hishikari.

Biography
Nobuyoshi Muto was born on 15 July 1868 in Saga Prefecture, Japan to a family of former samurai in the Saga Domain. He served as a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during the First Sino-Japanese War and was a military attache to the Russian Empire (learning fluent Russian) before fighting against them in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In 1921, as commander of the Japanese 3rd Infantry Division, Muto fought in the Siberian Intervention of the Russian Civil War, and he led the Kwantung Army from 1926 to 1927 and from 1932 to 1933, and he tried to stop the rape and prostitution introduced to Manchukuo by Doihara Kenji, a drug-addicted general of the IJA who led the Kwantung Army's military intelligence. Muto's requests to remove Kenji were ignored by Emperor Hirohito, so he committed seppuku and asked for Hirohito to show mercy to the people of Manchuria.